Cheating death with the platform souls

The train has been sitting at Broadmeadows for some time, looking freshly abandoned, like a school playground in the late afternoon: bits of paper and smudges of food on the seats and walkways, a soup of human perfume haunting the corners, and a latent sense of menace that exists in all things sleeping. There are people on the platform, mostly standing and taking in the sunshine.

A couple of minutes before the train is due to start its city run, the sunbathers make a dawdling scraping sound with their feet as they trawl to the carriages, their voices as slow and dreamy as their gait.

Soon after, you hear the brisk and purposeful footsteps of those happy to have made it with time to spare.

And then, with 30 seconds remaining, the choir of arrival into the station becomes increasingly agitated.

A scrum of youngsters comes barrelling through, collapsing through the carriage door with a clump of giggles. An older man hobbles at full pelt, makes it aboard, looks around at the dead-eyed folk with delight and relief, hoping to ignite them.

Now, and we're down to the last 10 seconds, you can hear a man and a woman urging each other on, their voices amplified and spooky with reverb, as if they're in a tunnel.

"COME ON!!!" the man screams, as he shoots across the platform, the cigarette dangling from his mouth a resilient twig of dead ash.

"I'VE JUST GOTTA . . . HANG ON, WILL YA?" his lady love calls, still in the bowels of the station house.

As the carriage doors start to close, the man pulls his head in, but arranges his hands as if he's halfway through pulling open some drapes. He's still calling for the woman to get aboard.

As she appears, carrying one of her thongs, the doors are sitting on either side of the man's raised knee, and she screams as if a lawnmower has just gone over her feet.

"BRIAN. BRIAN."

Indeed, there's a wounded quality in her dash for the carriage, because Brian seems to have suddenly forgotten her.

He cares only for his knee at this moment, and is pulling at it frantically.

As Brian manages to get the knee free, the woman is trying to force her bony hand into the closing gap - and then not.

For a moment, as the train begins to move, they look at each other through the window.

But the charm of the parting turns again to hysteria, as both Brian and, well, Mrs Brian, start pounding on the window. It's like something from a wartime evacuation.

As the train moves off, and after that initial lurch, it moves off very quickly, Mrs Brian's pounding fist can be heard travelling along the outside of the carriage.

And then she's gone.

We're well clear of the platform when Brian dramatically slaps at the window one last time, curses the air, sighs as if he's glad the horror is over, reaches for a new cigarette - and looks mightily surprised when his phone starts ringing. It isn't clear if it's Mrs Brian, because all he's saying is "Yeah . . . orright."

About half an hour later, on a train to Frankston, as it was pulling out of South Yarra, as it was just starting to really move, and the doors were closed, from the platform I saw a boy jump-step between the carriages and struggle to keep his balance on the shifting plates.

Oh, this was the day after a woman was killed jumping from a moving train at Dandenong station.